Appointed authority officials are immune to public and electoral pressure

Evidence

Not public opinion—not even the opinion of a Mayor and Governor—but raw power would determine whether Moses stayed on as president of the Fair, and of power he still had more than enough. On the Fair board were dozens of the most powerful men in the city and state. Moses handled them like unruly children. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4516

Categorization

• XREF: Directly reinforces the book’s core thesis from ch36 that Moses’s authority-based, machine-free power proved worse for democracy than machine corruption, and ch32’s point that only the President could stop him. — connects to: Appointing officials owe no reasoned consistency across their decisions. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2738; Even a governor’s formal power is limited against recalcitrant agencies — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 431; Fear of primary challenges silences officeholders against their own party’s excesses — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 335 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The structural question of this chapter: what recourse does a democracy have against a nonelected authority head that no one can remove — a resonant mechanism relevant to any agency designed to be insulated.